Japanese Episode
015:
"The Battle of the St. Anne"American Episode
115: "Battle
Aboard The St. Anne"Pokemon Dare
Da? RattaJapanese Air
Date:
July 8th, 1997American Air
Date:
September 7th, 1998 (premier), September 28th, 1998 (regular)Important Characters:
Sakaki (Giovanni)Important
Places:
St. Anne (St. Anne)

After
winning an Orange Badge from the Gym Leader Machisu, Satoshi and his
friends are walking along a dock when they're approached by a duo of
girls who give them free tickets to the grand luxury ship, the St.
Anne. Unknown to our heroes, however, is that the girls were
Musashi and Kojirou, working under orders from their boss on a scheme
to lure trainers onboard and then steal their pokemon. Onboard,
Satoshi meets a
Gentleman and decides to battle his Ratta with his Butterfree.
After the match, the Gentleman approaches Satoshi and asks him to trade
pokemon, a proposal that Satoshi eventually agrees to. Meanwhile,
Kojirou is tricked into buying a Koiking from a traveling salesman, an
act
that
angers his teammates since the pokemon is deemed to be useless.
Before they get a chance to find the salesman and demand a refund, the
time of their raid on the ship arrives. Musashi-tachi and a bunch
of undercover Rocket-Dan grunts launch their attack, but all
of the trainers unite to defeat the evil henchmen. Unfortunately,
an explosion occurs in the process, creating a hole in the hull of the
ship.
Water
floods into the St. Anne as everyone rushes to escape, but Satoshi
stays
behind to trade and get his Butterfree back. The ship suddenly
jolts,
and Satoshi and his friends are knocked unconscious. Meanwhile,
Musashi-tachi, who had stayed behind to retrieve the Monster Ball with
Koiking in it, are knocked unconscious as well. The captain and
all of the other trainers escape the sinking ship, unaware that
Satoshi,
Kasumi,
Takeshi, Pikachu, Musashi, Kojirou, and Nyasu are still in the
ship! Will our heroes make it out alive? To be
continued!ThoughtsThis
episode starts
a nice three-parter that I really enjoyed. While we did have an
(unofficial) three-parter with Satoshi capturing all the starter
pokemon, this is the first time where we have actual cliffhangers and
continuity and all that good stuff. I kind of wish the events of
this episode occurred in the games, though; you would ride the ship,
get attacked by
the Rocket-Dan instead of just randomly fighting trainers while the
ship's
docked, the ship would sink, you'd have to find your way out, ward off
a bunch of Gyarados, and then
get stuck on an island with giant pokemon. Wouldn't that be
fun!?

This episode also gives us the introduction of Sakaki, a character who
looked like he would be the main villain of the series but really just
kind of fizzled out as time went on. It's kind of depressing,
really, to watch these episodes, see how much potential is there, and
then continue to watch as the anime completely squanders it. No
big showdown
with Sakaki, no huge scheme that threatens the world, nothing. Sakaki, in these
episodes, voiced by the late Suzoki Hirotaka.

It's also interesting to note how Musashi and Kojirou are important
enough, in this portion of the series, to actually be given direct
orders from the boss and command over a group of Rocket-Dan
grunts. Sakaki will eventually completely forget who the hell
they are, but for now, it's interesting to see how he actually
sorta-kinda has some amount of confidence in them.

This is also the first
episode with the Koiking salesman, a character who seems like he'd just
be a one-shot but has ended up appearing in every one of the series so
far.
You may wonder why I
have
two dates up there for the American airdate. You see, 4Kids or
Nintendo or someone
decided that the first episode wasn't really that great an episode to
hook
fans to the series, so they picked a more action-packed episode to
start things off.
I sorta kinda agree with them, because the series does take a few
episodes
before it really gets interesting. Plus, this episode ends with a
cliffhanger, ensuring that fans would come back to watch it the next
day
to see what happened.

So, a
slightly different
version of this episode was made for that first day. All they did
was, at
the beginning, have the narrator say something like "This is a special
sneak peak of Pokémon." Then at the end, they had him say
"Will
our heroes escape? You'll have to wait a little while to find
out,
but tomorrow we'll see how Ash's Pokémon journey began" or
something
like
that. That "sneak preview" version only aired once, and now
whenever
this episode's aired, it's the regular version.

As for the dub itself...there are quite a few puns
that sneak their way into the script, but there aren't any major changes going on here.
The St. Anne, which is called the S.S. Anne in the American version of
the games, curiously keeps its Japanese name in the English version of
the anime. This won't be the first video game-to-anime
inconsistency 4Kids will goof up on...

Persian keeps its
Japanese voice.

Side
NoteSo the Rocket-Dan's disguises in this
episode seem to be based on ganguro, a fashion trend that
was popular at the time this episode came out that had girls tanning
their bodies to ridiculous levels and wearing bright, contrasting
make-up. Some people argue that Rougela is actually
supposed to be based on the fad, but when you see a picture of Musashi
and Kojirou from this episode and compare it with a picture of the ice
pokemon, I think it's pretty obvious which one's actually mocking the
fad.

Also, when James
is a
girl, he
constantly says "Cool~!" This is actually very close to what he
says
in Japanese - Kojirou says "Chou~!" (ultra-, super-, cool,
etc.).
To tell the truth, I kind of like James' version better...it just
sounds
funnier. Sure, "chou!" sounds funny, but it doesn't have that
ridiculous
super-girly tone to it that Eric Stuart's James has.

Oh yeah, and when
James does
that little giggle (as Jessie is saying "radical" a few times to make
Ash's
next line make sense), Kojirou doesn't giggle - he just says "chou~!"
again.
I guess 4Kids thought it looked more like he was giggling than saying
"Cool~!"
again, so I guess I can see where they're coming from. No big
loss.

And when Jessie
is saying
"To-ta-lly-Free!," Musashi says "Pu-re-se-n-to" ("present," as
in
the fact that the tickets are a "present" to Satoshi-tachi).

Paint EditThe sign at the
entrance to the big ballroom / convention center / whatever with the
Japanese writing didn't get edited, but this SALE sign did:

Click on each
image to view a larger version.

*sigh* I
miss the days when Japanese was edited out but then was actually translated instead of just left
blank.

Cut--6
seconds?So
apparently, the aforementioned sale shot (and the next shot with all
the merchandise
spread out on the table) was kept in the syndication broadcast but was
removed whenever Kids' WB! would air the episodes. The scenes are
present on the DVD, though, so it looks like this may be one of the
first Kids' WB!-only edits in the series.

Paint EditThe sign over the
Gentleman
in the Japanese version has the kanji for shouri (win) blinking
red after his Ratta defeats the other trainer's Starmie. We see
the sign again in the upper right-hand corner of the very next shot.

Click on each
image to view a larger version.

Dialogue Edit
The Koiking salesman charges 30,000 yen for the Koiking set, while in
the dub, he charges $300. That's a pretty accurate translation
there, so the ridiculousness of Kojirou having to borrow money to
afford something that only costs about $300 is present in both versions.

Cut--2 seconds
The first overhead shot of the ship right after the commercial break is
shortened by two seconds in the dub.

Dialogue EditWhen
Satoshi is
rethinking his trade on the outside of the ship with Kasumi, he calls
the man whom he traded with a "Gentleman" (as in the Gentleman
class of
trainers in the games). In the dub, Ash simply calls him "that
guy."

Added Footage--1 second
A second is added to the TO BE CONTINUED.. screen.